Pursuit Of The Cygnus Thief

Chapter 28 - NOrmandy4-7892

Chapter 28

“NOrmandy4-7892” by Roseyone

      At first, Mr. and Mrs. Blodget had braced their daughter between them, and she’d stood erect. Then, Mary had dithered, she’d swayed, and the elderly Blodgets scuffled to keep their daughter planted upright just inside the tavern’s front doors where they all stood. A long sleeved dress, a scarf, a face plastered with winter foundation all in late May, announced a failed conspiracy. Despite all efforts at concealment, Mary’s nightmare bled through.

     It was six o’clock. The dinner shift had started though, because it was a Saturday evening, and still early only the older grayish men of Assumption had taken their usual places at the bar and the booths closest to it. I swallowed shock, tried to quell fear, and stepped forward to do my job without taking a second direct look at Mary. Mr. Blodget wanted the booth closest to the juke box, that was where he and his family could be observed, yet remain buffered by a stretch of empty tables and booths until the expected crowd filed into the tavern.

    Unbidden, the flimsiest of the three scenarios pertaining to the previous night’s events tumbled from Mrs. Blodget’s mouth as they followed me. An old girlfriend from college showed up out of the blue, a spur of the moment trip to Los Angeles, then a flat tire just outside of Rosamond. High heels that had made for tough walking. A closed filling station was the worst, then to top it off, the pay telephone there had been out of order too. The two girls waited it out safely in front of the Shell until morning. Foolish girls. Lucky too.

    The other patrons, mostly middle-aged and elderly men had stopped chatting, eating and guzzling. A few nasty burps punctuated Mrs. Blodget’s story followed by a repugnant snort likely meant to have conveyed Mary’s new status. Mr. and Mrs. Blodget appeared grim, they had wedged Mary between them in the booth as if she might bolt. Mary barely blinked. I didn’t think she had the where-with-all to make it three feet on her own.

“A flat, it was a flat so,” Mary muttered her piece of the lie in a voice leagues apart from the knowledgeable tone she’d habitually employed as Assumption’s librarian. Mary’s pupils were conspicuously broadened, her eyeballs swam around in their sockets then both turned toward her nose. The drug had likely come from Dr. Paley only to be over administered by the Blodgets.

“-We’ll all have a cheeseburger-deluxe, medium rare. And, a couple of orange pops. I’ll have a draft.” Mr. Blodget’s voice successfully drowned out his daughter. Mrs. Blodget squeezed her daughter’s hand. She whispered to Mary whose lower jaw first slackened a little then hung wide open. There was a groan from their audience behind me. I moved closer to the table edge opposite Mary to block her from the prying eyes at the other end of the tavern’s main room. Mary drooled.

“Maybe you’d like to take another table where she won’t have to face,” the words shot from my mouth and left me gasping for air. Both senior Blodgets glared up at me as if I’d said something obscene.

“We don’t have all day!” Mr. Blodget said.

     The Crowns took turns at the kitchen door and behind the bar peeking through and down toward the jukebox in order to take in the sad spectacle situated there.

“Liars, everyone knows what really happened.” Mrs. Nan said as she returned from delivering Mr. Blodget’s beer to him. A number of patrons parked at the bar shook their heads in agreement, turned slowly to glance at the Blodget’s for the fourth or fifth time then added to the negative chatter regarding the Blodgets.

“All of that college business back East is what did it. If you ask me, that is.” Mr. Arty said when it was his turn to man the bar and his wife’s turn to help Dan in the kitchen.